State-of-the-art fish cleaning stations open for Ohio anglers' convenience
Anglers who fish Lake Erie, which include not a few central Ohioans, can embrace something extra this summer and for seasons to come.
While catching fish in the big lake is only infrequently a huge challenge, cleaning catch can present something of a regular problem.
Doing take-home filleting has long been tolerated if not generally welcomed as a messy necessity with malodorous aftereffects. Finding a fish-cleaning service, when available, often means a long wait not to mention a depleted wallet.
Some of the inconvenience has gone away with the opening of three state-of-the-art fish cleaning stations where anglers can reduce their fresh catch to fillets before departing for home.
The stations, funded at about $500,000 each by the Ohio Division of Wildlife, are located at the site of much-used public boating ramps at key fishing areas along the lake: Mazurik Access Area near Marblehead in Ottawa County; Huron River Boat Access at Huron in Erie County; and Avon Lake Boat Launch at Avon Lake in Lorain County.
The stations, which can accommodate multiple users simultaneously, are equipped with water, electrical outlets, cleaning tables and two grinders. When properly flushed from the grinder, fish mash flows into a holding tank at Mazurik and into the sanitary sewer system at Huron and Avon Lake.
Bring your fillet knife, sharpening stone, storage bags, ice and cooler. Fillets can be divvied up on the spot.
For the record, one of the cleaning stations almost immediately got jammed up by apparent misuse.
To keep the internal grinder functioning as efficently as, say, the woodchipper near the end of the film "Fargo," the wildlife division has posted an instructional video on how to properly utilize the cleaning stations.
Algae bloom on Lake Erie
Lake Erie’s summer blue-green algae bloom, which annually peaks in midsummer and runs into early autumn, has been forecast to be one of the smallest during the past decade, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.
Spring rains in the Maumee River basin, which includes Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, amounted to less than average. Much of the nutrient load that fuels the annual harmful algae blooms enters the lake from the Maumee, which flows through an area with high agriculture use.
An NOAA animated graphic a few days ago showed high concentration of blue-green algae, aka cyanobacteria, in the Maumee Bay outside Toledo and along the Michigan shore of Lake Erie. Little to no concentrations showed in the rest of the western basin or in the lake east of the islands.
Lake Erie is considered an impaired body of water measured by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.
The U.S. EPA, however, neglected to force Ohio to do anything about solving the lake’s primary pollution problem until sued successfully by the Environmental Law & Policy Center, Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie and the Lucas County Board of Commissioners.
Ohio EPA was required to submit a plan by June 30. In a March comment letter emailed to Tiffani Kavalec, chief of Ohio EPA’s Division of Surface Water, ELPC stated the state’s final draft plan “proposes to keep doing the same things that have already failed, focused on voluntary measures and incentive payments to producers.”
Parting shots
Monday is the last day to submit lottery applications for a shot at many controlled hunts on public land sponsored by the Ohio Division of Wildlife. See the Web site, wildohio.gov, for details. … The Ohio Wildlife Council is expected to vote on 2023 grouse season regulations at its meeting on Wednesday.